My thoughts: Fedor was just about starting to believe in his own invincibility and got sloppy against a too experienced and skilled grappler. Very dumb move.

I don't think Werdum was rocked either when he went down, but Fedor has done this so many times before and finished people off fairly easily, he just didn't expect to get such resistance... I guess fighting smart isn't the easiest thing when you're used to always beating people up without effort.

My thoughts: Fedor was just about starting to believe in his own invincibility and got sloppy against a too experienced and skilled grappler. Very dumb move.

I don't think Werdum was rocked either when he went down, but Fedor has done this so many times before and finished people off fairly easily, he just didn't expect to get such resistance... I guess fighting smart isn't the easiest thing when you're used to always beating people up without effort.

Well, you call it fighting smart . . . but learning is learning. You have ten years' experience with the best heavyweights in the world, you will learn from that experience. If your experience is that they often get rocked and then are on their way to being finished, you aren't "wrong" to have learned that. You are wrong only if you don't realize that what you have learned will not necessarily hold true with different opponents at different times.

That said, I don't really think Fedor was all that sloppy. He's used to escaping submission attempts without giving up position, and he lost a little more control over Werdum than he wanted to in getting out of the armbar, then the triangle was suddenly there like magic. Werdum just flowed the right way at the right time, which is, after all, his job.

The thing I loved (watching it on the computer today, didn't see it on TV) was the way Werdum suddenly starts checking his foot, his knee, the angles, everything very methodically with his left hand. It's like he can't believe he has Fedor in a triangle and he's sure there must be some opening Fedor is about to escape through. Then he stops in a motion that might as well be a happy shrug and just starts pulling down on Fedor's head and arm for all he's worth. It's as if you see the moment where he tells himself, "No, there's no space, this is really happening."